Broken Hallelujah
by cellochick373
Summary: Character study of Quinn, mostly, with Faberry at the end!  Based on this lyric: "But all I've ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you."  Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.


A/N: I think there was a prompt somewhere at one point in time about doing a song fic based on "Hallelujah." So. Here's some angst with happy Faberry endings in convenient little one-shot form!

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><p><em>But all I've ever learned from love<em>  
><em>Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you<em>

Quinn Fabray was not a heartless bitch.

She knew that all the evidence sort of pointed to the contrary, but she wasn't.

Really.

It wasn't her fault that she had been taught from an early age to never express emotion, and that showing love was the same as showing weakness. She couldn't help where she came from, no matter how much she wished she could, and so she thought it was unfair that people judged her for always having her walls up.

It also wasn't her fault that every time she managed to work up the courage to let some of her walls down she ended up being abandoned or criticized or ignored.

She didn't think anybody fully appreciated just how hard it was for her to tell someone she liked them, much less loved them. Everyone she had ever said the words to treated it as a non-event, something to be brushed off and forgotten. Not one single person had ever seemed to grasp the magnitude of the words or how much they meant to her. In her long line of friendships and relationships, she couldn't think of a single instance where love had ended well for her.

Finn had been her first attempt at really loving someone else, and she had been so incredibly hopeful that she might finally be able to let her guard down and trust someone other than herself. When she had told him that she loved him, though, he had just smiled that stupid dopey grin and said, "I'm going to go make nachos. Want some?"

She had been hurt and disappointed, but mostly she was just angry with herself. She had never had another person care about her before, and she felt so _stupid_ that she had thought someone might start now. But then Puck was there, with his sweet words and alcohol to help ease the ache inside of her, and so she had let him do what he wanted because she was focused on the hurt in her heart that she didn't even really notice the hurt between her legs.

The whole Babygate scandal just drove her further into herself, because Finn went from dopey smiles to hostile glares and screaming in about two seconds flat, and she was scared that she had been so close to giving him her heart completely. Puck was just as bad, with his guilty eyes and awkward touches, and she had pulled away from him too.

When baby Beth had been born, Quinn had looked at her and thought that she could love her more than life itself, and she had been sorely tempted to keep her. Beth had been the one thing in her life that had been untarnished, and that thought had been what prompted her to give the baby away. She was so scared of ruining the one good thing that had come out of her mess of a life, and she couldn't stand the thought of an innocent baby having to pay for all of her shortcomings and mistakes.

So. She had tried her hardest to love others, and all it lead to was being more alone and hurt than before. She had been hoping to have a fresh start at the beginning of the school year, and had vowed not to let her emotions get the better of her. It had seemed like a foolproof plan, and it was, until Sam came along with his stupid blue eyes and stupid blonde hair and_ stupid_ guitar that he used to serenade her.

Things had come closer to working out with him than with anyone previously, but they still spiraled downwards fast enough to make her head spin. She had never set out to hurt him but she did anyways, and the only positive thing she could find to latch onto was the fact that she had definitely made the right choice in giving her daughter up.

Even friendship seemed out of her reach, and the realization that even platonic love was beyond her grasp had been jarring. She never meant to hurt Santana as badly as she did, but once again things had gotten out of control and she had been helpless to fix the things she had broken.

Finn basically telling her that she had no feelings had been the final straw. She had been with him more out of a desire to repair everything she had broken the year before than out of any actual romantic desire, but it still stung. She had been so determined to prove him right, and she had sealed away her heart in the farthest corner of her chest, promising herself that it would never see the light of day again.

All she had learned from love was how to hurt other people, and if that was what love was about then she didn't want any part of it.

When Rachel had first started talking to her, Quinn had been understandably wary. They didn't exactly have a friendly history, and she assumed that the brunette had motives regarding Finn or someone else.

After three months of hesitant conversation, Quinn felt herself relaxing around the diva a little bit more than she was comfortable with. Rachel was steadily worming her way through all of the defenses she had set up, and she knew that she was setting herself up for potential heartbreak if she let their budding friendship continue.

It had been one of the hardest things she had ever done, but she had forced herself to cut off all contact with Rachel and started her old verbal harassment whenever they passed each other in the hallways.

To her never ending surprise, Rachel didn't go running back to Finn like she had expected. Instead, the brunette smiled patiently at her every day when she would insult her, and every day Quinn felt a little more of her determination to shove the brunette out of her life slip away.

It took two whole weeks of Rachel smiling at her and calmly accepting the abuse she dealt out before Quinn caved. It was a Friday, and she broke down in tears when she found Rachel in the choir room after school, her apologies lost amidst a jumble of sobs. Rachel had held her and stroked her hair and told her that she understood and it would be okay.

She had told Rachel the truth that day. She had looked at her and quietly said, "I'm sorry. Every other time I've let someone into my life I just get hurt when they decide they're done with me, and so I thought...that maybe if I cut you out of my life before you got tired of me, it might not hurt as much."

Rachel had looked at her steadily and replied, "I will never be done with you, Quinn."

The simple words and the weight behind them were too much, and without thinking she had surged forward and kissed the little brunette. She had pulled back not a second later, immediately contrite, but then Rachel had smiled at her and leaned in to kiss her again and it was _so much better_ than Finn or Puck or Sam or any other person in the world. She knew that Rachel understood everything she didn't have the words to say yet, and that the smaller girl felt the same way.

Knowing that somebody cared about her, maybe even enough to love her one day...it was a new feeling. She was nearly giddy with the joy of it, and as Rachel gently nipped her bottom lip, she thought that maybe this was what love was about. Maybe it wasn't all about pain and who could hurt who more.

Maybe, just maybe, this was what it was supposed to feel like. 


End file.
